Famines : causes and impact

In social sciences, the focus in famine research has shifted toward famines as ‘community crises’, where scarcity and human suffering is accompanied and aggravated by social breakdown1 . Communities lose their ability to support a significant portion of their members, causing accelerated destitution and fearful reactions related to one’s decreasing ‘command over food’. That is why famines are unique experiences that occupy a finite span of historical time and human experience. At the same time, they are recurring patterns that reveal insight into a society’s deeper and more enduring tensions and difficulties. The notion of famine as an event (sudden crisis), process (accelerated destitution) and structure (the breakdown of societal networks) creates the need for an integrated and historical famine research model. The guiding questions in this essay are: (a) How do we detect and measure famines?, (b) How do we explain famines?, (c) How do we assess the impact of famines?, and (d) How is the historical trajectory of famines related to contemporary hunger and food crises